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Is your snout in the trough yet?

While cancer patients will have to pay more or wait longer for treatment, the Department To Fix The Weather handed out nearly 1 billion dollars in 2010-2011, some* of which was used to “educate” people about energy efficiency and the benefits of government policies.

*UPDATE: While there are a lot of “education” grants in 2012, there are some research grants going to the CSIRO (eg in 2012 at least $13m of the $40m that year was for research at CSIRO). In 2010 (the big dollar grant year) many more of the grants were for “strategies”, for IPCC matters, for universities and the CSIRO — though none of the grants I’ve seen on a random sample add up to anything like the total outgoing.)

Is this advertising by any other name? Instead of running an ALP campaign advert, they award money to groups which promote their policies and get disguised third party ads by NGOs who collect donations and are seemingly the voice of the community (what percentage of these non-profits comes voluntarily from the community and what percentage comes via forced payment from tax?).

“Do Something” picked up $800,000 to become a type of GONGO and run a website that will apparently duplicate many of the messages taxpayers are already paying for on government sites. Other grants go for “efficient” lighting, which obviously isn’t economically efficient, or it wouldn’t need a government grant. Why are taxpayers in Roma, say, paying for hot water systems for councils in Glen Eira? Don’t the residents of Glen Eira pay for that in their rates? These layers of cross payments between different levels of governments and to allow seemingly “independent” groups to become disguised wings of government are a burden on Western Civilization. Every step that makes the payee more distant from the outcome makes it less likely money will be used wisely.

- Jo

Guest Post: Geoff Sherrington

The ARC (Australian Research Council) is not the only Australian government body to fund science research. The Department of Climate Change & Energy Efficiency also funds climate related projects.

Here is a table showing some spending and estimates of future spending on grants, a little old but still indicative.

What does a Department of Climate Change etc do with nearly a billion dollars a year? Why, it gives it away. I wonder how much income it earned, as opposed to was allocated.

Accountants can make better use of this than I can, but look at the annual grant payments 0f $919 million and $496 million. The lower spending in future times means little. It might simply represent a ‘saving’ that the Government can claim before its next election. It’s easy to make it bigger, later.

My interest was increased by Jo Nova’s article ’300,000 dollars and three years to produce a paper that lasted three weeks: Gergis’. As Dr Joelle Gergis said in June 2009, she had a project approved to study climate variability in S-E Australia. ‘The project, funded by the Australian Research Council’s Linkage scheme, is worth a total of $950,000 and will run from mid-2009 to mid-2012. It gives me a job for three years and money to bring a PhD student, research assistant and part time project manager on board.’

A linkage grant is called such, because it grants money to a group that has a funding link from another source. Much of the funding came from this & related departments. Co-author David Karoly also received a handsome sum to use to carry out his work. Professors are paid good salaries by their Universities, but apparently they need far, far more sometimes. Many people now know that the Gergis and Karoly paper was withdrawn.

This raises the broader question of who does the quality control on grants from the Dept of Climate Change?

Here are some examples of other recent grants. Did Australians get value for money? Were these wise grants, did they go to top quality researchers and did they have real benefits?

To raise awareness of activity that is reducing carbon pollution and helping to build a clean energy future via a series of interactive seminars for union officials and organisers in capital cities and in regional areas with carbon intensive industries.

$93,000

Recipient:

Environment Victoria Inc

Purpose:

To raise awareness of activity that is reducing carbon pollution and helping to build a clean energy future via a leadership, training and education program among multicultural communities and faith groups in Victoria.

Grant for the purposes of conducting a national consultation on the Kiribati National Climate Change Framework

$250,000

Recipient:

University of Melbourne

Purpose:

Provide extended estimates of regional scale climate variables (temperature and rainfall) to reduce uncertainties about climate change and its potential impacts in the Australasian region over the past 500-2,000 years.

$123,035 (GST inclusive)

While those above are supposed to be scientific/institutional, there are community ones as well.

Recipient:

Glen Eira City Council

Grant:

Purpose:

Funds will be used to upgrade lighting, hot water systems, window draught proofing and IT energy saving measures.

Do Something! will disseminate advice and energy efficiency information to over 15,000 community groups and 565 local councils nationwide. This includes developing a web portal, best practice guides, case studies and tip sheets, videos, eBooks, PowerPoint presentations, energy efficiency guides and providing access to an energy cost calculator. 4 Sept 2012 for 33 months.

$871,490.00

Do let us know what you think of these. Like, if you have been to Nhulunbuy (Gove), below, have you seen the LED lights? Or have you seen any light from these programs at all? (Note that Nhulunbuy has a huge alumina mine, with private generators paid for by the operator.)

Recipient:

East Arnhem Shire Council Nhulunbuy NT

Purpose:

Council is replacing existing street lights with energy efficient LED lights.

Worth reminding that the Australian Youth Climate Coalition is the green-leftist lobby group founded by Anna Rose, that young and naive chick you may remember debating with Nick Minchin last year, interviewing Jo and writing an ABC-sponsored book. Their group’s policy objectives are a) doing climate propaganda for other impressionable kids, and b) lobbying the government to move to a 100% renewable energy. So, once again, the Labor government is funding “independent” lobby groups who then lobby the government to do what they wanted to do in the first place, only that way it looks like it comes from the “community”, the “people”.

Is that the same Anna Rose who is married to Simon Sheikh (who, before he became National Director of GetUp, helped Anna found the AYCC, and has now announced his nomination to stand on the Greens Senate ticket in NSW in the 2013 election)?

I spent four years in Gove (Nhulunbuy) from 2004 to 2008. I was also there in 1973-74 but that’s ancient history. Most of my latest stint there I was involved in the construction, commissioning, and integration of two 260 ton per hour (tph) at 95 atmospheres (ATM) boilers, and two 68MW generators at the existing power station.

ALL of the power for the refinery, the town, and the surrounding Aboriginal communities, is generated from the power station at the refinery. There are five Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO – bunker oil) fired boilers, each with a capacity of 260 tph.

This output has very little to do with electricity generation. The boilers produce steam at 95 ATM, at 536 deg C, because that is the point at which they operate most efficiently. Some of the steam (about 15%) is fed through turbines to produce electricity. It goes into the turbines at 95 ATM, and comes out at 45 ATM.

ALL of the steam (85% at 95 ATM and 15% at 45 ATM) is then fed through step-down expansion stations to create even more steam at 25 ATM, 16 ATM, and 12 ATM. This steam is then used in various processes associated with the processing of the bauxite ore.

The bottom line is that the steam generation is the sum-total result of processing requirements NOT electricity generation. Electricity generation is merely a cost-effective by-product of steam already needed elsewhere.

The ARC could provide a billion dollars for somebody to build a nuclear power plant at Gove, and the power plant could offer to sell electricity to the refinery for one cent per terrawatt. The refinery would STILL need exactly the same amount of steam for processing, and it would STILL be generated at 95 ATM and 536 deg C, because that is its most cost-effective operational band.

.
Any taxpayer’s money spent in ‘improving” electricity use in Gove was taxpayer’s money flushed down the toilet.

I thought that Trades Unions existed to protect the jobs of their members. If Awareness of “carbon-reducing schemes”, (which are cost increasing / job destroying) leaves them with three alternatives.

1. They protect their members, and use their new knowledge to block these schemes.
2. They put the “environment” before the interests of their members.
3. Have a nice day out, enjoy the free lunch, and sleep through the sessions. Then they just waste the membership fees.

If there are profitable carbon-reducing schemes, the employers would pay to go on these courses.

Agenda 21 is actually a world-wide blueprint for international totalitarian control of all the earth, and its resources — including “human resources”. The goal of Agenda 21 is “sustainable development” — a term which explains the U.N. position that human beings are destroying the earth’s atmosphere, its wildlife and natural resources.

The purpose of Agenda 21 therefore to curtail this manufactured “threat”, by pushing governments to implement policies, restricting people from engaging in risky behavior that these globalists deem as lacking “sustainability”. The behavior considered risky or lacking “sustainability” is virtually every behavior where people engage in a free society. That’s the problem.

I remember the good old days when a private foundation got its money from donors and then handed out grants. Now it seems
the “private” foundations just waits for the government to hand it money. Saves all that time looking for donors.

Do Something! will disseminate advice and energy efficiency information to over 15,000 community groups and 565 local councils nationwide. This includes developing a web portal, best practice guides, case studies and tip sheets, videos, eBooks, PowerPoint presentations, energy efficiency guides and providing access to an energy cost calculator.
4 Sept 2012 for 33 months. = $871,490.00

No, they won’t do anything, they will just use propaganda to tell other people to do something.
These commies can’t hold back! They say they want to use “a market solution” to reduce carbon emissions, but instead of sitting back and letting the market thriftily innovate its way to lower costs, they still want to tell you what to do anyway!

Videos??? To tell you how to reduce energy usage?? There is no energy reduction you could make by yourself that would be so complicated you would need a video to explain how to do it. The point of the videos will not be how to reduce energy usage but to sell people on the whole idea of reducing energy usage. In other words, just propaganda.
I predict a lot of attractive smiling people replacing light bulbs, a wife frowning and shaking her head as the husband is about to put clothes into a dryer, and a kid stopping to turn off the light before leaving the room.

A more authentic video would be like this….
SCENE - A man is facing away from the camera, standing under the shower while shaving with a razor.

VOICEOVER: This is Rob. Rob is a climate denier, so we can't show you his face on television. Hi Rob.

SCENE - Rob waves.

VOICEOVER: Rob has no idea why he's being forced to pay more for his electricity under the
Labor government's carbon tax and Renewable Energy Target scheme,
but he does know how to save money.

ROB: Uh huh!

VOICEOVER: That's why Rob switched from using an electric razor to a razor blade in the morning.

SCENE - Rob nicks his skin.

ROB: Ouch!

VOICEOVER: Rob also had his electricity meter replaced with a new Government-approved SMART Meter,
so that we can turn on and off his different household circuits and smart appliances at any time.

ROB: Uhhh?

VOICEOVER: Actually Rob didn't choose that, we made it mandatory and just did it to his house yesterday.
Now we can switch off his water heater since he doesn't really need it.

ROB: Ah! Oh! Frubebbebbrrrr! (He shrieks as cold water hits him.)

VOICEOVER: And now the sun is over the horizon, turning off the lights would be the smart thing to do.

SCENE - All the lights go dark.

ROB: Arrrrgh! (Sound of a razor being dropped onto tiles.)

VOICEOVER: Still smarting Rob?

ROB: JOOOOOLLLIAARRRRRRR!

VOICEOVER: If you're not already in the dark covered in cold water and
bleeding while yelling God's name, get Climate Smart today!

- – – – – – – – – – – – –

Updated Entry In the Macquarie Dictionary:masochism: (n.) an affinity for being climate smart.

[I predict a lot of attractive smiling people replacing light bulbs, a wife frowning and shaking her head as the husband is about to put clothes into a dryer, and a kid stopping to turn off the light before leaving the room.]

Yup, and shown in primary schools so the young kiddies will come home and emotionally blackmail their parents to actually do things like turn the lights off.

… so the young kiddies will come home and emotionally blackmail their parents …

Well done Cat. You have finally figured out how propaganda is supposed to work …

Unfortunately, the propagandists haven’t quite figured out how to manage the resulting cognitive dissonance, in this age of mass communication channels, but with another and larger grant, I am sure they will get that cracked too.

5. Believes that, as a consequence of some of the proposals presented, the ITU itself could become the ruling power over aspects of the internet, which could end the present bottom-up, multi-stakeholder model; expresses concern that, if adopted, these proposals may seriously affect the development of, and access to, online services for end users, as well as the digital economy as a whole; believes that internet governance and related regulatory issues should continue to be defined at a comprehensive and multi-stakeholder level;

6. Is concerned that the ITU reform proposals include the establishment of new profit mechanisms that could seriously threaten the open and competitive nature of the internet, driving up prices, hampering innovation and limiting access; recalls that the internet should remain free and open;

That is straight from the EU. Either you believe the EU is objecting to proposals that were never seriously proposed and that Google is lying when they say these were serious proposals, or else there are proposals to expand regulation by the ITU.

Do you see it doesn’t actually matter? It does not matter whether the ITU really is hoping to “take over the Internet”. Point is … *someone* is planning on getting more power over the Internet, it might even be Google & USA & Co hoping to take advantage of any bad press reaction about the ITU, and either way the status quo that has been so nice to us would not remain for long.

yes I wrote the first comment above half tongue-in-cheek, but you know who I am and so you know if i get more evidence like this and it ever turns into a plausible theory suitable for serious discussion i will say all this again under a different account name.

I have no problem with minimising power consumption- I’ve done it for years as it saves me money. But to link it to preventing global warming is complete lunacy. It’s the power of AGW advocates I’d like to reduce.

Good digging Geoff, I guess generating these grants gives the Climate Change Dept something to do.

Catamon, I was not originally going to say this but my anger remains unabated.

Those who try to use children against their parents align themselves with the most despicable element in human society, the Nazis of the 1930s or China under Mao. And that’s not an exhaustive list.

You who practice or advocate this are child predators every bit as much as the pedophile who does them physical and emotional harm. You take advantage of those who cannot give their informed consent to what you want them to do. It’s that simple. Is this what you stand for? Are you a man standing tall or are you someone to be shunned like the plague you just advocated?

This stupidity about turning lights off in the home, or even changing light bulbs for CFL’s always makes me laugh, especially having looked into it so many times.

Residential consumption here in Oz is 25% of all power consumption.

Of that residential consumption, household lighting makes up 8%.

The most used light in the home is the Kitchen light which in most residential applications is the first light turned on and the last one turned off. That light alone makes up 75% of all residential lighting.

That leaves bedroom lights and bathroom/toilet lights so there’s three or four bulbs.

So, turning off one light saves (for that part of the time it is turned off before turning it back on again) 20% of 25% of 8% of 25% total power, so here we have a saving of 0.1% of power.

The average residential consumption costs around $5 a day, so the saving in monetary terms of turning off that light amounts to half of one cent per day, or around $1.80 a year. Leave the room and turn the light off, go back into the room, turn the light back on, so that half a cent a day is if the light stays off all the time, and is not turned off and on as they leave and then re-enter the room.

Now as to what that may do to overall total power consumption, the effect, even if everybody was to do this, would be so totally and utterly insignificant as to not even register on the grid.

Power plants would not change one iota, and would still generate the same amount of power, burning the same amount of coal or Natural gas, and emitting the same amount of CO2.

The word disappears because < is the opening character of an HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) tag. So the server is trying to interpret the following characters as some kind of control rather than part of the text. It's similar to when you use the b button (check out what that inserts in the text). But it’s not too swift about dealing with things it can’t make sense of so the offending word isn’t displayed.

My single < shows up only because there isn't a matching right angle bracket before the next < or the end of the text.

Not only that, Tony, we also have to consider the heating and cooling cycle stresses within the bulbs from the on again, off again pattern. Normal domestic rated light bulbs last for about a week, when used in flashing signs.

The energy consumed, and the CO2 expended in the manufacture of the bulb far exceeds the cost of bulb when in use. So using more bulbs actually makes the situation far worse.

People just don’t know how to think systemically, which is why these stupid point solutions become part if the great meme.

We use compact florescent bulbs (they are the ones that take 5 minutes to come up to full light output), but we leave them on all of the time, (except in the bedrooms, obviously). They cost next to nothing to run, and we have never needed to replace one, except for one or two in the bedrooms, that eventually fail to light correctly.

All I see is huge potential to reduce government spending and waste. Not the grants (they can be redirected to more worthy causes) but by disbanding the Department of Climate Change & Energy Efficiency. What a waste of human capital. This department just sucks up more educated, intelligent Australians hired at taxpayer expense to run programs designed to make Australia less productive and less internationally competitive. Educated and intelligent Australians that could contribute so much more in real jobs that matter. Oh how easy it would be to return the Australian government budget to surplus and guarantee future job security for our kids when he mining boom is just a memory.

The annoying thing with the likes of sites like Do Something is that they actually suck away traffic and interest from sites and blogs on the very subjects they cover. Its a propaganda device and does nothing to add depth to any of the subject areas it covers. Plus seems to be totally ignorant of anything that existed prior to it.

… sites like Do Something … suck away traffic and interest from sites and blogs on the very subjects they cover.

Yes, but they only appeal to a narrow demographic, and all of these “trendy” sites end up competing with each other for funding and effect. If they had not appeared in a list of Government grant recipients, I doubt whether we would be discussing them now.

On the positive side, the more competition there is for that narrow demographic, the more the messages get diluted and confused, and that can only be a good thing. I will start to worry if they actually manage to Do Something (TM) that leads to them getting organised.

Eco guy,
What can you do? Select a grant like ‘Do Something’ and seek FOI correspondence with agents overseas who are bringing Australia into this.

Or, you can study the Environment Victoria grant with a lawyer to see if faith groups are disallowed because of the Constitution s.116 “The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.”

The theme is, if you are able, don’t just read these posts, set yourself a task and carry it trough. Blogs have plenty of words. The real results, globally, are coming from actions such as FOI and legal challenges.

You know? F*** it! Lets just do it! Lets just turn all the coal fire power stations off. If thats what they want, then lets do it.
Within hours 90% of those believers will be saying “WTF was I thinking!? That was a stupid idea!”
You cant keep telling little Johnny not to jump off the roof. It gets to the point where you need to just let him jump. Sure, he hill hurt himself, but at least he will learn!

Isn’t it already costing billions of dollars in government waste, fraud, diversion to green dream schemes, etc? How much would be saved by waking up the whole country right now as opposed to allowing the public to continue to be robbed while the scam winds down over years? It won’t change until the fence sitters and hand wringers are really inconvenienced in a big way.

Now, where do we find some energy company with gargantuan brass cojones?

It’s easy for me to say as I’m from California so don’t have a dog in your fight. I’m glad we don’t have anything resembling your problems (sarc). Really, nothing will change for the better until the people make it happen.

Carbon neutral copy paper means that because they recycled the paper rather than chop down some trees they got some carbon credits to spend on the CO2 they emitted making the recycled paper, any short fall in credits was made up by buying some from Saint Al of the Gore who got them from a tin pot dictator in Addis Ababa after a promise not to chop down any trees and keep his populace living in third world conditions by denying them access to cheap, abundant and reliable electricty and sanatised water.

No James it’s not about people receiving money in fair trade for their goods or services but those jostling like pigs at the trough at feeding time with union slush funds, rates and taxes. While everything ‘green’ is now in vogue to try and explain away good old fashioned rent-seeking and bludging I prefer to think of them all as ECOBUMS nowadays if you read on.

Thank you, Rereke. In the main, that was the intended use of the words. Besides, many creatures besides pigs have snouts, like the poor Proboscis Monkey – Nasalis larvatus, who has a whopper that is not her/his fault.
The other word was trough. In this allegory, if no trough of money was provided, then snouts would have fewer places at which to feed.
I fail to see hypocracy – otherwise I would not have written the article – but I do see a most questionable distribution of public monies.
Tell me, James, were you asked if you wished to contribute funds to these causes? Did you give consent? Do you argree that they are a wise allocation of scarce recources? Can you see any element of vote-buying or propaganda? Were you aware of them before reading them here? (and there are many, many more if this ilk).

Are you, personally, a co-recipient of grants, like people who live in Glen Eira or Nhulunbuy? Or don’t you even know? I’ve suggested all readers look for a grant mention that affects them and let us know.

Mattb, you imply an interesting conundrum with reference to the myth of the Free Lunch.

If there is free lunches or free money on offer from the government under a spending programme which can only culminate in bankrupting the nation and stifling productivity, should people take the money or not? It is almost a question of which ethical theory is applied to the situation, a consequentialist approach or a deontological approach.

In the short term, the consequences of taking the money is you buy stuff you want. The longer term consequences are not directly traceable to one’s own relatively minor incremental action, so consequentialism in the short term would say yes to the free lunch, pig out all you want.

The deontological approach depends on what moral diktats or rules one believes in, and perhaps if you believe it is wrong to suckle at the teat of the taxpayer then the answer will be no. On the other hand if you believe in the purpose of the handout it would be wrong to fail to advance the cause by not taking the money, so the trough is then sought after.

Either way, both frameworks still leave us with options and so we must still ask, whose happiness should be maximised by these decisions, the pig preferring to promptly partake of passing prosperity, or the citizen deeply concerned by the ostensible purpose of the pork barrelling but unwilling to abet the pig-out?

James, you must feel pretty lousy only getting 5c per word from GetUp! when all of those other warmie pigs are ‘schnuffling’ up the bounty by the millions — even our resident idiot Johnny Brooksie will probably get more than you.

James. I have no problem equating the fraudulent bastards sucking on the government teet while propagandizing to children as PIGS. They are selling out all Australians through their complicity with Agenda 21 which seeks to dismantle democracy in our country by peddling the CAGW lie.

After serious thought i think we should go for the big 1900 litre “ecotrough” (see i thought of everything).

This baby can be used for all sorts of things “large animals” ergo Flannery/Gore, fish ponds, swiming pools etc so you see James its not all about pigs. This model has a few design features we need to be wary of. Firstly they would like to know if you want a drain plug, a drain plug? how silly would that be we want the pigs er i mean kiddies and fish to swim all year round we have no need for a drain plug. Another feature is a float level now i dont know about you but i see no need for a float level at the rate these pigs ooops animals eat and drink from this trough we will be hard pressed to keep the feed up to them there is no chance of it ever over flowing is there?

1900 Litre EcoTrough
The 1900 litre EcoTrough is suitable for a wide range of large animals, but you can also use it for a fishpond, garden beds or even a kids swimming pool! Your EcoTrough can be used as a feed trough or a water trough, and is sometimes known as a stock trough.

Size: 2.485m diametre x 500mm high.

This EcoTrough includes a 25mm high pressure float valve, if you are using this as a pond, please advise us at checkout.

Do you need a drain plug? Let us know when ordering and we will install one for you.

I don’t want to encourage James, who is a waste of time, but he has linked to Jo’s post on Williams comparing sceptics to pedophiles; is he making a comparison between Williams doing that and Jo metaphoring recipients of AGW largesse to pigs at a trough and saying Jo is a hypocrite?

If so that is stupid because William’s vile slur has no basis in fact whereas recipients of AGW money are taking money fraudulently since AGW has been disproven; also, since pigs will eat anything under any conditions and with no restraint the comparison by Jo is very apt.

Maybe James doesn’t understand what a metaphor is. He should familiarize himself with U.S. politics and the Pork Barrel metaphor to get a little bit different take on the matter.

You see James, it’s this way — wherever possible, one faction will get into league with another to help each other out. Many times this happens without either side entering into any formal agreement. But nonetheless, an agreement exists and is always understood to be that if I send you money, you will send me support, or vice versa. Quid pro quo!

It may be unfortunate for the poor pig that he’s been singled out as the symbol for this little swindle. But that’s the way it is, like it or not.

And that’s what we’re talking about in a nutshell — just a swindle plain and simple; a damned diversion of public funds to private benefit.

Honest men and women don’t like that so get used to our objection to it.

Pidanpost,
While you claim that this has little to do with climate change, it comes from the department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. Clearly, it is not leading directly to more efficient use of energy. As to climate change, it has no significant content of amelioration, adaptation, or prior planning for a bad effect of climate change. It is dominated by an intent to get people to love climate departments from an early age. When you study the expenditures, you will quickly see that there are more practical ways to spend this money. Have a thought about people of low incomes, sleeping with their children in cars because they cannot obtain or afford housing. Sure, it’s a matter of judgement as to where government funds are allocated, but I’m sure you could agree that this is not the best way.

In New Zealand, the “Retail Customer Service” charges cover meter readings, meter charges, and billing processes. When I worked in the electricity industry, these were about $1.00 – $1.50 per consumer. If you assume $2.00, you would be ballpark.

So, if you deduct $2.00 from the 20% of your power bill that goes to Energy Efficiency and Renewables (which is not even a word) then that would give you the amount you are subsidising “renewable” energy.

Old44
Thank you, this is a most important point. I have never been offered an explanation of how much of our rising energy bills is from solar and windmill plant and experiments with carbon capture and storage.

However, his figures do not carry a Government endorsement, however good they might be. Personally, I feel that the costs of alternative programs should be dissected and the compenent of each placed on each home owner and business energy account. Like you, I think that there are red faces being concealed behind quivering hands doing their best to keep this embarrassment from the Australian public.

Has anyone seen an official government dissection of alternative energy costs, year by year over (say) the past decade? Plus a projection for the next few years? One that avoids doublespeak like job creation benefits from jobs that are not needed to begin with?

As Mrs Beetson (disputably) said in her Book of Household Management (1851), ‘First catch your hare’. (or trough). Look through the government literature, select a cause that seems well monied and hop on the bandwagon. Make up an application for next year; or several; or a huge number, and submit them. If your conscience allows.

First, think of a big crisis that will affect our children’s future (meaning, far enough in time that you’ll be retired by the time it becomes clear there was no crisis).

Second, think of what you can offer, why you ask for money. If you are a scientist, you can perhaps measure or test something; if you are an engineer, you can plan practical solutions. But if you are an art graduate, you are in a better position, because you will “raise awareness”. Scientific models and engineering solutions may or may not work, but raising awareness never fails.

Third, think of specific sub-groups of the population that need help in having their awareness raised. To select wisely, consult a directory of leftist “victim groups”. For example, you will raise awareness within lesbian indigenous communities.

The irony i…..sorry I-RO-NY (noun: incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs) not sure if that helps, the irony is that without “carbon pollution” we would all be dead as we need “carbon pollution” as a medium to transfer oxygen from red blood cells to our muscles.

[...] the home front Jo Nova found that nearly a $Billion of climate-related education and PR work was commissioned which appeared to be designed to promote a political agenda. Not academic fraud but worthy of [...]

Mass consensus reality trance (MCRT) is a term for the conformity-oriented thought fog that seems to deprive members of our culture of the ability to think critically about social issues that affect them. Mass consensus reality trance means that we see and accept the world as we are told to see it by media leaders and corporations, even when their policies threaten our health, well-being and security.

The concept of MCRT was originally based on the don Juan books by Carlos Casteneda, especially the notion of “stopping the world” – that we cannot see reality as it is until we stop the influence of mass culture on our thinking. This deceptive mass trance can be somewhat explained by several mechanisms of individual and group psychology, including innate learning processes, groupthink, and media manipulation of the public.

Innate Learning Processes: Habituation and Conditioning

Habituation and conditioning (otherwise known as classical and operant behavioral conditioning) are primitive forms of learning that automatically occur as we experience phenomena. Habituation involves learning to accept things that we are exposed to repeatedly while conditioning is associating positive or negative values with phenomena based on early experiences with them. Together, habituation and conditioning help our brains make sense of the complex world by finding categories and labels to associate with what we see and hear.

The processes of conditioning and habituation create instantaneous neural connections that go from sensing phenomena to categorizing it to reacting to it with a positive or negative value. Ultimately, this process becomes so automatic that we are not aware of it as we do it or of how we color our behavior and feelings according to the categories we use.

Habituation and conditioning provide much of the power for stereotypes, prejudice and other negative reactions to our fellow human beings (including people in our own families). When experience conditions us to see people in a category, we also learn an assessment of their worth and set of reactions to them (such as, gender role expectations, stereotypes of disadvantaged groups and enemy images).

Habituation also powers much of current public apathy by negating the emotional impact of wars, corruption and environmental loss because they are presented repeatedly. For example, the first images of third world famine provoked outrage, but after many exposures, people now seem to shrug and forget about them. Habituation also accounts for why repeated messages get accepted uncritically, so that politicians and marketers alike can manipulate the public to accept lies (Saddam caused 9/11) and the endless need to spend money on this or that.

Habituation and conditioning create unconscious behavior, feelings and thinking patterns that belie our control of our lives. In mass consensus reality trance, habituation and conditioning ensure we are deeply stuck in the trances of media addiction, consumerism and unthinking acceptance of world political actions.

It is a rare thing when people become aware of a habituated patterns and make the choice to not follow it, to do something new – even when it is life threatening. In our present situation, six years of ugly war, dire environmental losses and other problems have failed to wake us up from our trance enough to stop our political system from continuing on this course.

Group Think

Another root concept of mass consensus thinking is group think (Janis, 1972), which is a distorted style of reasoning that takes place in groups that are motivated to conform and are somewhat insulated. Members in such a group become enamored with group harmony, and are afraid to challenge the consensus or say something that might disrupt the easy state of agreement. The group engages in collective rationalization should any contrary evidence appear or will put pressure on anyone who dissents from the group mind.

Group think leads to a belief in the inherent superiority and morality of one’s own group, and the inferiority of other groups. It is thought that this comfort with the familiar and discomfort with the new evolved as a survival strategy during ancient times of scarcity – that those who favored their own group’s needs were much more likely to survive.

Group think is dangerous because the truth gets lost – it is sacrificed by group members for the safety of the herd. Propaganda-fed group think in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia is what allowed their governments to commit such massive inhumanities as the holocaust and the Gulag thought prisons to take place. Their government controlled medias convinced the German and Russian publics that the millions who suffered were bad people and that massive warfare was needed for the good of the nation.

When group think takes hold, individual thinking and humanitarian values such as honesty, justice, kindness, compassion, understanding, etc. – become secondary to fitting in with the group mentality. Those who disagree are threatening to group think. Not only are naysayers’ warnings never heeded, they ultimately get in trouble unless they shut up and go along.

Media Manipulation of the Public

Group think is being exploited by the mass media establishments of our society to promote the profit agenda of the economic forces behind them and to produce maximum influences on their customer base. The corporate powers that drive consumerism have worked to create a dependency on media to ensure a pliable, consistent marketing base to reap profits from.

The media uses psychological techniques to ingrain consumer addiction to products and to media itself. Our culture is becoming obsessed with electronic media – one need not look far to see scores of people glued to televisions, music gadgets, cell phones and computers for much of their lives. The term, “media addiction” is being used more and more to describe the public’s need for more and more gadgets and programs.

There is good evidence that national intelligence is slipping overall as standardized test scores go down and voluntary reading rates (including online reading) have slipped to 7-12 minutes a day for most adults (National Endowment for the Arts, 2007).

During this time of increased media addiction and receptivity we also see mainstream media collaboration with the agendas of political groups, particularly on the news. The same propaganda techniques used in totalitarian regimes are used today, including flag waving, appealing to fears, demonic enemy images, disinformation, glittering generalities and name calling (SourceWatch, n.d.).

Noam Chomsky (1998) has explained how media news programming has to pass through several economically-driven filters, including favorability to media owners and sponsors, not arousing flak groups, and not challenging the media community’s consensus norms. These filters ensure that media news will not present anything challenging to the group think harmony of our culture.

Mass Consciousness?

Mass consensus reality trance explains why public apathy is so dominant and unmoving despite well-publicized information that our culture is moving towards immense disasters on so many fronts. Most members of the public are continuing a mass consumption, media-infiltrated lifestyle that increases our environmental and political problems and is making us more and more unhealthy.

To some degree we have abdicated too much control of our thinking because we fear the negative attention we would get by not following mass consciousness trends and opinions. There is such comfort in accepting what is fed to us by a constant stream of media input that it is frightening to consider what it would be like to be free of it.

If the world is moving in unhealthy and destructive directions, how can we awaken our collective conscience to make the needed changes in time? Are we able to wake up or will we be kept entranced by Big Brother’s glowing screens?

Our company is now in it’s 8th year supplying solar powered LED lighting but we have never been able to latch on to one of these subsidy schemes. Maybe our snouts are not long enough or we don’t recognise the troughs when we see them.

At least we can say that because we don’t depend upon subsidies, ours is a sustainable business.

I’ve added an update in at the top to make it clear that some of the funding went to “advertising” and some to “research”. (Though we know that research at universities which is mostly model based predictions is arguably still more like advertising than science.) The DCC pages don’t make it clear how much of the grant allocation went to research, to the IPCC team, to community programs or to the councils etc. So some of the nearly 1 billion in 2010 was used for education, and some for research. In 2011, more was “education” (apparently). The 2012 budget has a lot of community programs than research and university based one, but the overall budget is a lot smaller than the 2010 and 2011 ones.

—————————-
*UPDATE: While there are a lot of “education” grants in 2012, there are some research grants going to the CSIRO (eg in 2012 at least $13m of the $40m that year was for research at CSIRO). In 2010 (the big dollar grant year) many more of the grants were for “strategies”, for IPCC matters, for universities and the CSIRO — though none of the grants I’ve seen on a random sample add up to anything like the total outgoing.)

the amount paid to “do something” is crazy. we just had Sam The Lamb Man linking with Sir Richard in a “Do Something” Meat Free Monday campaign to Save The Planet, and i have to wonder if the money is used to pay the celebrities:

25 Nov: SMH: Tim Barlass: With the world at steak, eat more veggies
Proud carnivores Sam Neill and Sam Kekovich look away, a campaign to encourage Australians to eat less meat has been launched.
The initiative called Meat Free Monday is being fronted by the nutritionist Rosemary Stanton and the TV chef Janella Purcell and has received the backing of the entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson…
***Meat Free Mondays Australia has been launched by the not-for-profit Do Something! charity and the newly launched Fry’s Family Foundation (the Fry’s family runs the Meat Free Mondays campaign in South Africa).
The University of Technology Sydney’s Institute for Sustainable Futures is providing research support for the campaign.http://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/diet-and-fitness/with-the-world-at-steak-eat-more-veggies-20121124-29zzs.html

hundreds of millions announced in here, but don’t know how they fit with all that’s been listed above:

how on earth has Sam Kekovich found himself in the company of the pretentious, hypocritical Sir Richard, beloved of the same crowd who go for Malcolm Turnbull in a big way! LOL.

1 Feb: Virgin: Antarctica log 3 – the world will never have another ice age by Richard Branson
The good news is we now know how to heat up the world. We just release an excess of carbon into it. So any time we’re heading to an ice age again that is what we can do to stop it.
The bad news is that we’re are in danger of releasing so much carbon that we could fry our beautiful earth and our great-grandchildren too.
If we move quickly and get on top of this issue we could regulate the earth’s temperature so that we need never go back into another ice age. And have the best of all worlds.
Work to do!http://www.virgin.com.au/richard-branson/blog/antarctica-log-3–the-world-will-never-have-another-ice-age

Off the topic slightly but concerning what the DCC actually does. I have been discussing Australia’s carbon emissions target and actual emissions, with the DCC for months but I am getting nowhere.

My questions relate to Australia’s 1990, CO2 emission target and actual emissions through to 2010. The DCC reported that Australia has beaten our Kyoto emission target, and my query was since our emissions from power etc increased by 46% in that period, how did we beat the Kyoto +/- 5% target?

DCC replied that while emissions from power etc had increased by 143 Mtpa, land use and forestry emissions were reduced by some 104 Mtpa. My query was simply, how was this reduction in land use and forestry emissions achieved? The DCC website asserts that they will answer all queries in 20 working days but I am still waiting for a coherent response after some eight months.

It seems the DCC is fully employed completing IPCC CO2 emission reports and managing taxpayer funds to promote Global Warming rather than to answer simple questions that their website assures us is their primary concern.

I admire your Proactiveness on this one.
I’d like to make a suggestions as to why you havnt hears back:

1. They just make up the figures.. They can’t shownyou where they are from.
2. They’ve profiled you as a skeptic (because warmbots just nod and drool and never ask good questions)
3. A combination of 1. And 2.

>”how was this reduction in land use and forestry emissions achieved?”
Terrarious, you probably know the answer, but good on you for pushing them to put it in writing. Quite simply, Labor State governments stole the Carbon from private landowners and converted managed, fire-protected State Forest to NP in return for Cwth bribes. Fence-and-forget in the name of green goodness, while sacrificing industry, employment and the principle of freehold ownership. Farmers and forestry owners, subjected to limits on clearing and logging without compensation, have “donated” $$billions so that the Government can bask in the glory at Cancun, Doha etc etc. Meantime, the NPs go unmanaged, firebombed and feral, and landowners still pay rates and outgoings on their sterilised, devalued properties. The Carbon Farming Initiative merely taunts with dangled carrots of cash tied pipe-dream conditins which are unachievable unmanageable unviable and impractical. Let us know if you ever get a meaningful answer from DCC.

this is where the fightback will come from, along with non-property owners realising the full implications of being forced to pay for property owners’ solar feed-in tariffs, etc:

28 Nov: Daily Telegraph: Alicia Wood: Families fume as water, gas rises
WATER rates have increased by 17 per cent – even though cautious homeowners are consuming 1 per cent less.
NSW utility users, already under pressure from mounting household bills, were hit with a double blow yesterday, as gas companies announced they want to gouge an extra $84 a year…
Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal chairman Peter Boxall said retailers suggested the price rises were necessary to absorb distribution costs and to offset the carbon tax.
Dr Boxall said IPART would not automatically approve the increases…
But community organisations like the St Vincent De Paul Society have warned that the proposed increases, combined with rising electricity and water rates, would push many families below the poverty line.
In NSW, electricity bills have increased by 38 per cent since March 2011, 18 per cent of which was in the last financial year.
St Vincent de Paul CEO Michael Perusco said Vinnies has given out $800,000 in energy assistance in the last three months.
He estimates this would rise to more than $1 million if the prices rise as proposed by gas companies…
Energy Minister Chris Hartcher said yesterday the proposed price rise was due to an uncertain future for local gas markets…http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/families-fume-as-water-gas-rises/story-e6freuy9-1226525274097

looks like common sense is winning EVERYWHERE. why should any company be wasting time, energy & money on such a ridiculous exercise?

29 Nov: Bloomberg: Alex Morales: Qatar Hosting Climate Talks
Spotlights Carbon-Data Void
Five of 2,199 publicly traded companies in the Middle East reported their CO2 output last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Those that did report, which included National Bank of Oman SAOG (NBOB) and Strauss Group Ltd. (STRS) of Israel, were 0.2 percent of the total. That compares with 4.2 percent in the 27- nation European Union, 3.9 percent in both Latin America and Africa, 3.2 percent in Asia and 1.3 percent in North America…
Of the EU’s 11,331 listed companies, 475 report emissions, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. In Asia-Pacific, the tally was 762 out of 24,144; in Latin America it was 68 out of 1,722 and in North America it was 229 out of 17,371. Fifty-six of Africa’s 1,425 listed companies disclosed emissions in their most recent annual reports…http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-11-29/qatar-hosting-climate-talks-spotlights-carbon-data-void.html

Yet another nail in the anti-science coffin? Oh I know, it’s all a commo conspiracy and the numbers are faked right? And besides we don’t want pay tax therefore it must be wrong.

[snip]

But never fear those pinkos have got it wrong again:

Ice Age Alert: Unprecedented Arctic Sea Ice Freeze In Progress
Arctic Sea Ice Increases Past FOUR MILLION Square Kilometers For The First Time Since Records Began! (on the 30th September 2012)

Unprecedented 4 MILLION Sqkm Benchmark Smashed!

Never before has Arctic Sea Ice increased from below 4 million square kilometers to above 4 million square kilometers. Will the mainstream media now correct their discredited claims made just a month ago that the Arctic is melting?

You must admit it was an astounding coincidence to see record breaking melting on one side of the Earth and record breaking freezing on the other.

The case for inverse correlation of the two poles must have been considerably strengthened, and the fact that it can happen in a single year seems to put paid to those long term time constants (latent warming, etc).

Just a suggestion but might it be a good idea to leave in his link and just explain the discrepancy to readers. I think we’re all well able to figure out what he tried to do, given your calling our attention to it.

as we know, Radio Australia’s snout is in the trough. obviously, without carbon dioxide emissions trading taking off, there will never be anything like this funding, nor LOANS:

26 Nov: Radio Australia: Climate change negotiations to open in Doha
David Ciplet, Brown University in the US: I think the biggest issues going to be that we’re just are finishing right now what’s called the Fast Start finance period, which is between 2010 and 2012 and wealthy countries promised that they were going to scale up climate finance to $US100 billion a year by 2020…
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts: Well, less than half of the Fast Start finance is in the form of grants. The rest is loans, which means that poor countries must repay with interest the costs of adapting to a problem that they haven’t caused. Well, that’s a double-edged sword, of course, but how many of these countries will be in the position to actually pay it back and the interest?…
COUTTS: When you were looking into this report, only two of the ten donors that you assessed were delivering their fair share of climate finance based on their ability to pay and how much they contributed to climate change through emitting greenhouse gases in recent decades. Norway was performing the best. But what reasons did you find for these various countries – and I asked the outset why not, but individually, the countries did you get an answer?
CIPLET: We haven’t done answers yet, and that’s something that we’d like to hear in Doha is not only why we haven’t seen countries step up to contribute their fair share, but we want to know more specifically how they’re going to improve on this in the future…
CIPLET: I think a few things that we’d like to see move forward is one, we’d like to see concrete commitment from now, from 2012 until 2020 of how much funding will be provided for adaptation and mitigation and we’d like to see that promises be made specifically in terms of grant funding and as you mentioned, it is important that there’s money available for countries to carry out adaptation and mitigation programs without having to repay these loans with interest.
In addition, we need to see more transparency. It’s still very difficult to figure out where this money is going, how much money is actually reaching projects on the ground, and this is important for taxpayers in wealthy countries as it is for people who are suffering impact in developing countries. We need to know where this money is going and that it’s being used effectively…http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/international/radio/program/pacific-beat/climate-change-negotiations-to-open-in-doha/1051534

Thanks to mullumhillbilly for your helpful response, which has clarified Labor’s “carbon farming” concept which I did not have a clue about. I still intend to keep after our high priced DCC. I am new here so how does one input the right sequence number, or is it automatic?

terrarious,
Your number is asigned by the software that runs all this and which sometimes does odd things of its own making. All comments are welcomed so long as they are related to the theme, they are courteous, free of libellous and ugly comments and to the best of the knowledge of the writer, truthful. There are many scientsts in the readership and if you stray too far from correct science people might tell you. It’s not a forum for having a vent so much as to spread information of use to others who can act with you to make wrongs right. The aim is to give more than you take, which is a good basic life philosophy in any case.
Welcome aboard.

If you simply want to post a comment, go to the bottom of the page and start typing in the section “leave a reply”. Your comment will be posted at the bottom of thread.

On the other hand, if you wish to reply to a particular comment, click on the word “reply” next to the date stamp immediately below the name of the poster you wish to reply to.

This will open a “leave a reply (cancel reply)” box you can type in, and your response will appear below the comment you are responding to.

In both cases there is a “Preview” button, and a “Post Comment” button below where your typed text appears. The “Preview” button allows you to see how your post will look, and also allows you to test any link you may have included. Right click on your link in “Preview” mode, select “open in a new tab” and your link should open in a new screen.

When satisfied with your “Preview”, simply click on the “Post Comment” tab.

.
That’s how it works – most of the time anyway. As Geoff has pointed out, sometimes the software develops a mind of its own and sticks your post somewhere else entirely.